Moogfest success? Mike Adams takes the long view

Andrew Parker, left, and Robert Sidden, both of Asheville, make use of the Conductar: Moogfest, a system where people walk through downtown Asheville creating music from their own brainwaves. Images and sounds are projected using a smartphone and transmitted back to a centralized map.(Photo: Photo by Robert Bradley)Buy Photo

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To him, it's hearing from an Asheville Symphony Orchestra representative that the group, which performed at Moogfest, got excellent exposure, he said, and a big, new opportunity from a festival attendee. Or that Asheville's Wicked Weed Brewing had unprecedented food and beverage sales during festival week April 23-27.

It's the positive response from the 250 area school children who attended the revamped, five-day festival that featured more than 100 musical performances, 105 speakers, panels, multimedia installations and public art exhibits and expos.

And in the long term, success will mean creating "more good paying jobs here," Adams said Tuesday afternoon.

He spoke to the Citizen-Times Tuesday, just an hour before the Buncombe County Culture and Recreation Authority decided not to consider a Moogfest grant application for $250,000 because it was submitted after the deadline.

The grant application revealed details about the profits and expenditures for the downtown festival, organized by Moog Music and founded in honor of electronic music innovator Bob Moog.

Moogfest 2014 lost more than $1.5 million. Ticket sales totaled more than $712,000, with food, beverage and merchandise sales at around $29,000. Expenses totaled more than $2.7 million. The majority of the festival costs came from talent. Festival organizers Moog Music spent more than $1.5 million on artists and artists travel, hotel and meals.

Adams says he doesn't view the festival in terms of profits and losses. "This was a $3 million investment" for "the community where we live and work," he said.

"We are very invested in this area," Adams noted. "We just thought that there was a need for an alternative to (longtime city-supported downtown street festival) Bele Chere, and we think we have a better idea of what that ought to be, and we think now that we have proven that we have created that by attracting the right kind of people who can invest in the area."

He noted that he "could not be happier" with the feedback he's received from community and business partners, attendees and participating artists.

Moogfest 2014, touted as a new economic development tool to coax more technology talent to the area, received $90,000 in funding from the county and $40,000 from the city of Asheville, along with another $50,000 in in-kind services.

He believes Moogfest can help attract major manufacturing and technology job creators. These jobs could improve the balance of the economy, and help shift the local economy's dependence away from tourism and retirement-related businesses.

Adams noted that they are seeking funding for next year's festival from public sources – including those on the city, county and state level – as well as area businesses and sponsors from across the state and country.

"We really need to work together as a community to try to send this thing forward," he said.

Leaders with North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, for instance, have "already contacted us and said they want to support the next iteration of Moogfest." A representative from RTP, one of the largest high-tech research and development parks in the world, participated in festival programming.

"We have also been contacted by a couple of really big sponsors that saw the value" of what we did, Adams noted.

Festival organizers worked with community partners, including the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, to collect data on festival attendees and overall event impact.

One measure success: Media reach. So far, the company has recorded 168 million impressions of Moogfest and Asheville from media outlets across the country and the world. The New York Times published a piece of the festival, for example, and outlets in Japan, Mexico and Italy also wrote about Asheville and Moogfest.

"How many millions of dollars would you spend to get that kind of exposure?" Adams said. "There will be ramifications for that, and you will see good things come from that."

He said these results are not going to be immediately evident from an economic impact study or "anything else that necessarily happens in the next one or two months or in the past three weeks."

"In the end, if we can see opportunities for people to come here and create better paying jobs, we will have really accomplished our objective," Adams said.